It shouldn't matter, but Jack Murphy also looks like Montgomery Burns' favorite son. | Photo: EOS

Warshaw on death of Jack “Murph the Surf” Murphy: “He was a stone-cold killer who took a pair of female crime accomplices out for a boat ride, beat them to death, knifed opened their torsos, tied them to concrete blocks, and threw them overboard.”

Matt Warshaw

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Murphy, it turns out, was very much not the debonair gentleman thief as played by Don Stoud in Live a Little, Steal a Lot.

Jack Murphy, the handsome surfer-playboy jewel thief — that’s what Nora Ephron would have you think, anyway — died last week at age 83, from heart failure.

Murphy was born in LA but belongs to Florida. That’s where he made his mark as a surfer, winning the ’62 Daytona Championships and briefly running Murf’s Surf Shop in Indialantic.

And that’s where he began thieving professionally, as a B&E creeper in Miami Beach, stealing high-end art from rich people’s beach homes and selling the pieces back to their insurance companies.

In 1964, Murphy and two accomplices broke into the American Museum of Natural History in New York and stole the Star of India sapphire, plus a big handful of other precious gems, and “Jewel Heist of the Century” stories ran coast to coast.

Three days later they were caught, and Murphy served 21 months in Rikers.

My resentment against Jack Murphy began with the fact that his perfect “Murf the Surf” nickname sounded too much like “Murphy,” and I don’t want anybody or anything stepping that close to Rick Griffin’s sweet-faced cartoon grom, who represents all of our surfing innocence.

(In 2013 I described Murphy as the Hello Kitty of surf culture, meaning he was sweet, popular and beloved, and I stand by that call.)

What really put me off Jack Murphy, though, was looking deeper into his criminal history while writing Encyclopedia of Surfing in 2000. Murphy, it turns out, was very much not the debonair gentleman thief as played by Don Stoud in Live a Little, Steal a Lot.

He was a stone-cold killer who in 1967 took a pair of female crime accomplices out for a boat ride, beat them to death, knifed opened their torsos, tied them to concrete blocks, and threw them overboard.

The East Coast Surfing Hall of Fame elected Murphy on their first ballot, in 1996, noting his competition wins and his surf shop.

The open-and-shut double-murder conviction somehow went unmentioned.

It shouldn’t matter, but Jack Murphy also looks like Montgomery Burns’ favorite son.

(Like Matt Warshaw’s flavour? This obit comes from his weekly mail-out, sent to all good surfers who cut three bucks a month to subscribe to his bottomless archive of surf history. Join here. And if you want a little more, listen to Matt, along with Tyler and Jamie Breuer on their Sunday Joint podcast here. Fascinating.)

Listen: Longtom and Chas Smith on stalkers, empty political gestures and the conjoining of the Great White shark to modern culture wars: “The Great white shark as an avenging spirit for deeply misanthropic thinking that regards humans as a cancer on the planet.”

Derek Rielly

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And, what if you hate Bad Grandpa Biden but love Kammy Haz? Where does that leave a man?

On a sleepy morning recently, one man in Lennox Head, another in Cabo San Lucas and the other in Sydney, the important matters of critical race theory, the proliferation of stalkers of surf stars on the Gold Coast, the beatification of the Great White and more were discussed in a roundtable of sorts.

Questions:

Was Tyler Wright’s BLM protest a wonderful thing or was it an empty gesture, a confected outrage?

EJ Coffey and sis have monetised their asses for men that like to jerk their hips. Good or no?

The reason black kids don’t surf in Australia is because of the high cost of coastal real estate. Fact or fiction?

Patagonia says “Vote the assholes out.”

What if you hate Bad Grandpa Biden but love Kammy Haz? Where does that leave a man?

Some very poor audio, as usual.

Peeping Tom: Once-bucolic Encinitas grants Surfline permission to add more cameras at Moonlight and Swami’s; Surfline, in turn, insures they “can’t be redirected to stare at sunbathers on the beach!”

Chas Smith

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Extremely troubling.

As much hullaballoos and ruckuses as major media cause, it’s still the small town, local newspaper where true information resides. Honest facts presented honestly, not fired in the kiln of “left” or “right.” Not glazed with a lead-free layer of bias.

And it was this morning that I read in the Encinitas Advocate that Surfline, a company that invites you to “know before you go,” had been granted unanimous approval by the Encinitas City Council to add four more cameras on public structures.

The deal, which will last three years, allows for three cameras to be affixed to the Marine Safety Center at the very popular with inland residents Moonlight Beach and one on the lifeguard station at iconic Swami’s.

The city will receive $645 a month total, which seems like a sweetheart deal. Like, not at all the going market rate. Like, worthy of investigation.

The City Council, heading off potential criticism, insured their public that “…the camera systems are controlled by the Surfline company, not the subscribers, so viewers can’t redirect them to stare at sunbathers on the beach.”

And this raises very much concern. I am assuming the Encinitas City Council has never met anyone who worked for Surfline. Never gazed into those beady eyes, heard the darkness seeping unfiltered from those mouths. Never felt the cold, clammy handshake or been touched, inappropriately, slightly below the waistline.

Surfline men, including Surfline Man, are never to be trusted. Not trusted to deliver accurate surf forecasts nor trusted to hold to even the lowest standard of decorum.

From this point hence, we must assume that Huntington Beach’s Surfline office is wallpapered with images of Moonlight and Swami’s sunbathers.

Extremely troubling.

Noted Cabarita surfer Christian Bungate and sons. | Photo: Christian Bungate/Facebook

Australian foilboarder breaks silence on Cabarita Beach Great White attack: “I left my board and I crawled up the beach and I lay on my stomach bawling my eyes out.”

Derek Rielly

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"I was off my board and on top of the bloody thing. It was like I was submerged on a rock, it was so hard and rough."

Three days ago, foilboarder and noted local surfer Christian Bungate was hit by a Great White at the site of last weekend’s Tweed Heads Pro, the animal, which was described as a “tank”, leaving behind a tooth in the foil’s carbon fibres. 

Bungate, was, initially at least, loathe to talk to the press, preferring, according to friends, a few days to process the event.

The hit came two weeks after Nick Slater was killed by a Great White at the Superbank, forty-five minutes drive north, four months after Rob Pedretti was killed by a  Great White at Kingscliff, ten minutes drive north, one month after longboarder Chantelle Doyle was pulled out of a Great White’s mouth by her husband at Port Macquarie, a few hours south, and two months after teenager Mani Hart-Deville was killed by a Great White at Wooli, a couple of hours south. 

So, yeah, Bungate knew it was a close call. 

Speaking yesterday to the ABC’s Gold Coast bureau, Bungate said he was fifty yards off Cabarita Beach on his foil when he saw a shadow alongside him. 

Harrowing?

Yeah.

“It was like there was an oil slick next to me, it was so big. It came up so slowly, and I literally shit myself and kicked it as hard as I could with my right leg.”

The White hit his board and knocked him into the water.

“I was off my board and on top of the bloody thing. It was like I was submerged on a rock, it was so hard and rough.”

Then,

As he managed to scramble off, the predator came at him with jaws gaping, but bit the board instead. Mr Bungate was convinced if he had been on a standard surfboard rather than a foil board, which has a 70cm keel and wings instead of a fin, he would be dead.

“I’m 100 per cent sure if I was on a normal surfboard it would’ve given the shark clear access to get straight back at me and it probably would’ve taken out my stomach,” he said. “Instead it caught the wing of my foil board, hence why there’s a bloody tooth in it. I left my board and I crawled up the beach and I lay on my stomach bawling my eyes out.”

World famous DJ and influencer Diplo nearly decapitated at Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch: “I got rocked!”

Chas Smith

By

Rare company.

Oh the unseen dangers lurking amongst the tule fog and cow stink of central California’s Lemoore. There is: 1) Stiffer than normal whiskey sodas poured at the Tachi Palace Casino Resort by gruff bartenders. 2) Methamphetamine. 3) Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch which boasts “The World’s Best and Longest Barrel for Human Beings Under Three Feet Tall.”

I know first hand.

When Derek Rielly and I traveled there, a handful of years ago, to participate in “media day” at the aforementioned Surf Ranch we shared a comfortable room at the Tachi Palace and drank a handful of whiskey sodas each. I somehow escaped the head-splitting, stomach-turning hangover but Derek Rielly did not, waking up the morning we were scheduled to hunch into the aforementioned barrel very green in the face.

He somehow worked through his discomfort and put on quite a show for Chris Cotê, Vaughn Dead, Nick Carroll and others.

I did not and as poet laureate Ben Marcus enjoys immortalizing, bounced off the cement bottom and loosened my arm from its socket.

It was not the first time. My arm had been loosened from its socket a good 30-ish times prior but still very frustrating and as I shuffled to the pool’s edge, reinserting it, I was very frustrated though semi-placated myself with re-inserting it in front of the lifeguard while sneering about medical attention. Like Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon.

Well, I am now joined by world famous DJ and influencer Diplo who just became nearly decapitated by the Oompa-Loompa.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CFU-pBtH9N5/

Ouch but I feel Diplo’s pain. That 30-ish time was enough for me to get my arm surgically sewn in and while it was a horrible experience my arm no longer falls out of place. I would recommend the same to Diplo, re. his head, and will hope that poet laureate Ben Marcus also eulogizes him.

Very cool.

Photo: Justin Jay/@justinjayphoto
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